Plastic is the most common material when it comes to producing end-use parts and products, ranging from consumer products to medical devices. It is highly versatile, with thousands of polymer options, each pf which have their own mechanical properties. Over the years, several plastic manufacturing processes have been developed that encompass a huge range of applications, part geometrics, and types of plastics. If you are a designer or an engineer working with product development, you should be familiar with the manufacturing options available today and the upcoming developments. The following factors are to be considered when selecting a manufacturing process for your product:

Form: your parts may have complex internal features or tight tolerance requirements. You may have to choose from limited options of manufacturing, depending on the geometry of a design. Alternatively, they may require significant design for manufacturing (DFM) optimization to make them economical to produce.

Volume/cost: some manufacturing processes incur high front cost for tooling and setup, but produce parts that are inexpensive on a per-part basis. On the other hand, low volume manufacturing processes have low startup costs, but thanks to slower cycle times, less automation, and manual labour, cost per part remains constant or has marginal reduction when volume increases.

Lead time: do you need parts or finished goods quickly? Well, keep in mind that some processes create first parts within 24 hours, while it may take months to complete tooling and setup for high volume production processes. The All India Plastics Manufacturers’ Association, commonly known as the AIPMA, is the oldest and the largest apex body of the plastic industry in India. The plastic machine manufacturers association of India was founded by industry visionaries almost 75 years ago.

Material: you should be aware of the stresses and strains that your product will need to stand up to, before getting in touch with plastic manufacturers association India. A number of factors work behind the optimal material for a given application. The cost should be at par with functional and aesthetic requirements. You should take into consideration the ideal characteristics for your specific application and weigh them against the available choices in a given manufacturing processes.